This is the house in Newton, Massachusetts, where I lived from birth until I went to college. When my parents bought this house in the late 1970s, Newton was a middle class suburb of Boston. In recent years, property values have skyrocketed making it a more affluent suburb. The house was a good size for our family because both my brother and I got our own bedrooms, and my parents added on a family room in the early 1980s where we spent most of our leisure/TV watching time. We owned the house and it was affordable as both my parents worked good white collar jobs (finance and public relations), and Newton was not as expensive then as it is now. My family moved there because:

1. my mother lived there in her late teenage years and her parents still lived in the area
2. it was on the Boston subway and close to major highways
3. there was a large Jewish population
4. the public schools are some of the best in the country

I moved out when I went to college at age 18, but my mother still lives in the house today. She's very proud of the color of those blue shutters. I painted that fence one summer.